From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2006-08-09T23:38:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Looking for a Fast Persistent Store


On Aug 9, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Harold Hausman wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> If you're the fun and adventurous type you might want to look into
> Mongoose. ( http://rubyforge.org/projects/mongoose/ ) It's new, and
> claims to be fast. In the past I wrote some small apps that used the
> same authors other system called KirbyBase which was very nice, I
> haven't tried Mongoose yet, but I'm happily awaiting a problem with
> which to use it on.  Though now that I'm thinking about it I don't
> know if it has built-in "transaction" support. I suppose it depends on
> what you want it to do.

I have had a look at Mongoose, and quite like it. I'm sure to find a  
use for it. However, for this particular situation Mongoose's  
transactions are too week.

>
> Have you tried SQLite and found it to be too slow? It sounds to me
> like you might be prematurely optimizing. We have several medium to
> medium-large sized apps that make heavy use of SQLite and speed has
> been not a problem at all.

In the Java world things like Perst and JDBM were very fast. SQLite  
was problematic for some reason that is a bit foggy just now (I'll  
think of it).

>
> What domain are you working in that requires this kind of speed
> anyway? Just curious.

I write web based applications. The situations I'm thinking of are  
either financial or CMS-like applications. In the financial cases  
I've got situations where there might be a few million (probably not  
more than ten million, well maybe 20 million) small things tucked  
away. In the case of CMS-like stuff there are far fewer things, lets  
say 25k at most and usually more like a thousand or so, but they are  
bigger things.

The key factor (pardon the pun) is that the *vast* majority of the  
time (and I know how to make it 100% of the time) queries are as  
you'd have in a hash table (i.e. a single key where the key is  
usually a String).

This is for the persistent store associated with xampl (see URL in my  
signature). Xampl already has a few persistent stores but I now need  
one a little fancier.


>
> Hope that helps,
> -Harold
>

Thanks Harold.

Cheers,
Bob

----
Bob Hutchison                  -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/ 
hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc.          -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur                      -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>
xampl for Ruby                 -- <http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/>